Corinne Clark
University of Oxford
Corinne works on the intersection between physical and spiritual experience and expression in medieval Latin and vernacular literatures. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the concept of ‘sweetness’, examining different approaches to encountering sweet substances or sweet language in texts which include the monastic writings of John of Fécamp, Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium, and the works of the ‘Wooing Group’ and the ‘Katherine Group’.
The difficult, transgressive or perplexing body is at the root of much of Corinne’s research. Her master’s thesis considered fragmented saintly bodies and homiletic compilations in the Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 303. She has published on scribal transcription and error in the romance Thomas of Erceldoune (JEBS, 2023) and most recently on the difficult emplacement of spirits in the Middle English Gast of Gy (Special Issue, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 2025).
Corinne was a teaching assistant at the University of Geneva from 2023-2024 and is currently a supervisor and lecturer for undergraduate students at Oxford. She is particularly interested in the challenges around ensuring responsible pedagogy. She hopes that ADAM will prompt and provide a platform for conversations about what it is that we might consider ‘difficult’ in the interconnected enterprises of studying, teaching, and researching the medieval.
Grace O’Duffy
Harvard University
Grace's research focuses on gendered and sexual violence in medieval literature. She recently completed her doctoral thesis at St John's College, University of Oxford, where her thesis examined sexual violence in the Old Norse fornaldarsögur and Íslendingasögur. In summer 2025, she will join the Harvard Society of Fellows to develop her doctoral work and begin a new project on rape narratives across medieval Europe.
Despite the popular misconception of Vikings as 'raiders and rapists', little scholarly attention has been devoted to sexual violence in Old Norse literature, and Grace's work aims to discuss the vast and varied ways in which sexual violence and coercion are threaded through Old Norse saga and myth. She has published recent work on gendered violence in Hrólfs saga kraka in Scandinavian Studies, and written on the hitherto unnoticed sexually violent nature of three scenes in Bósa saga ok Herrauðs in Saga-Book.
Grace is especially interested in the evasive language and shifting conceptualisation of sexual violence across time. She hopes that ADAM will help lay a path across the rough terrain of the language used to discuss 'difficult' topics'.
Elliot Worrall
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Elliot specializes in the representation of identity in Old Norse saga literature. He began his academic career with an undergraduate degree in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon studies at the University of Aberdeen, where his thesis examined the role of gender in Old Norse portrayals of Sámi alterity. He continued his studies with an RMA in Medieval History at Utrecht University, where his master’s thesis explored racial “blackness” in the 15th century Icelandic text Ectors saga.
Currently, Elliot is pursuing a PhD at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf as part of the Post-REALM project. This project aims to develop new interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the production, reception, and dissemination of medieval European literature, using the 26 extant versions of the Floire et Blancheflor romance. Elliot’s doctoral research builds on the work of this project, examining representations of identity – particularly class, gender, race, and religion – in the Scandinavian texts of this tradition.
Elliot is particularly interested in how personal experience, or a lack thereof, effects how scholars engage with 'difficult' topics. He hopes that ADAM will encourage medievalists to give greater consideration to their positionality in relation to these topics.
A.D.A.M. 